I heard from long time friend and contributor Scott Fennessy during the break. He just finished his 1908 replay! Scott has always been a deadball devotee so this is a big deal.
Scott sent in a recap so I’m posting it with his blessing. Thanks, Scott!
Today I completed the 1908 World Series, which ends my 1908 replay. I started this replay at 8:02 AM on 8/8/2022. Johnny Bates rolls a 16-28 for a ground out to start the regular season.
The regular season came to end 12/14/23 at 5:05 PM as Jasper Davis rolls a 14-30 to fly out to Matt McIntyre. Season took 1 year, 164 days to complete.
To complete this schedule for two 8 team leagues playing a 140 game schedule was 1121 games total. The reason for the 140 game total is that the 1901 replay was 140 games with the remaining games canceled in memorandum of president McKinley, who was assassinated during the summer.
I wanted there to be no “well player A played 150 games a year while player B played 162 games a year and so on”, so I decided that all seasons will be 140 games. As an added bonus I probably shave about 2 months of rolling time off my progress. The only two drawbacks are I have to edit the schedule before every replay, which can be problematic in the modern ERA, and this wipes out any chance of using actual lineups, which while disappointing, is tolerable.
This year was the first year I tried to use hard limits, but this was an original issue set, with most teams having only 23 players, nor was there an XB or XC set available, so many teams did not have enough appearances to cover many positions. Because of this I simply used Games appeared in for position players, and Start/Relief appearances for pitchers to at least make it somewhat better. I used a 4 man rotation as much as possible until limits took pitchers out.
So now that the intro is over here is some “by the numbers” before I give you the recaps.
No-hitters
There were a record 17 no hitters this replay. 14 by A or better pitchers, the remaining 3 were by B starters. Vic Willis of the Pirates became the first pitcher to throw back to back no hitters for me in July. He was the only pitcher to throw more than one this replay, and is the first pitcher to have more than 2 in his career now, matching the two he threw in 1901 (both against the lowly Reds) for a total of 4 in 8 seasons. Thanks to his light hitting lineup Vivian Lindaman had to throw 11 innings of no hit ball to pick up the win.
John Chesbro of the Yankees and George Rucker of the Dodgers had to go 10 for theirs.
| Pitcher | Team | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Leon Ames | Giants | 4/25/08 |
| Rube Waddell | Browns | 5/16/08 |
| Orval Overall | Cubs | 5/22/08 |
| Vivian Lindaman | Braves | 6/5/08 |
| Ed Walsh | White Sox | 6/16/08 |
| John Pfiester | Cubs | 6/24/08 |
| Vic Willis | Pirates | 7/4/08 |
| Vic Willis | Pirates | 7/14/08 |
| Johnny Lush | Cardinals | 7/17/08 |
| John Chesbro | Yankees | 7/20/08 |
| Andy Coakley | Cubs | 7/30/08 |
| Charlie Berger | Indians | 8/5/08 |
| George Rucker | Dodgers | 8/8/08 |
| Eddie Plank | A’s | 9/10/08 |
| Joe Lake | Yankees | 9/17/08 |
| Ed Reulbach | Cubs | 9/20/08 |
| George McQuillian | Phillies | 9/23/08 |
Records set in 1908
There were a total of 4 new records set this year, all of them by pitchers. They are:
- Most complete games in a season Ed Walsh (White Sox) 49
- Lowest WHIP Season Ed Walsh (White Sox) WS 0.64
- Most consecutive shutouts Harry Howell (Browns) 4
- Consecutive shutout innings Harry Howell (Browns) 37.1
Pitching was beyond overpowering this replay. I don’t normally track this, but I would bet the 285 shutouts I rolled was easily a record.
| Most complete games in a season | Ed Walsh | White Sox | 49 |
| Lowest WHIP Season | Ed Walsh | White Sox | 0.64 |
| Most consecutive shutouts | Harry Howell | Browns | 4 |
| Consecutive shutout innings | Harry Howell | Browns | 37 1/3 |
I had never had a card with four 31’s before this set. It features three players with four 31’s. Ty Cobb, Willie Keeler and Napoleon Lajoie. I was surprised that Honus Wagner did NOT get this, but it’s not like his card was lacking because of it.
Extras
I normally don’t track extra innings. It felt like every other game was in extras. I was surprised that there were only 35 extra inning games. However, because hitting was so gimped in this set many of the games went EXTRA innings. Here is the breakdown:
- 10 innings 13 times
- 11 innings 3 times
- 12 innings 5 times
- 13 innings 4 times
- 14 innings 3 times
- 17 innings twice
And the Reds and Dodgers, who had no desire to win this one went 27 innings for a new record.
See you when I have the AL update ready.
Thanks for the update, Scott. Congratulations on finishing the replay! Any time that happens it’s quite an accomplishment. Deadball is definitely a different ball of wax, that’s for sure.
Are there any other deadball replayers out there??
I’m curious as to how often you went to the sacrifice booklet? I’m not sure how many times they tried to move the runners but with the large amount of sacrifice hits that year there must have been a large number of attempts as well.
I did not use the sacrifice book with the same frequency as in the past. Partly because the hit and run set up a lot of first and third situations, and partly because during previous replays I didn’t have much luck.
In the past I have had each team with one “designated bunter” because of all the 32’s, but I didn’t get a lot of that this year. One or two teams had 2 guys with a lot of sacrifices, but this year I had a lot of teams with almost the entire roster with 5-8, so it seemed more evenly spread out.
The Giants were the one team that was the exception to this, because their lineup was a lot stronger than most, they didn’t really need to sacrifice. Hit and run, plus a lot of timely 11’s made it much easier for their pitching to just go out and get batters out.
Enjoyed the writeup. Seventeen no-hitters! Wow. Overhwhelming pitching, as is the case with all the pre-1920 sets. Totally different game with singles hitters, speed, dependency on scoring one run at a time.
Love reading this one. Is there a higher grade than A&B? Maybe A&B*? lol
There should have been an A&B&C rating. But I doubt anyone would have ever wrranted that.
I would argue that Jack Chesbro’s 40 win season would, but even that only got the A&B on the original print, but was downgraded to A&C on the reissue.